Australia
A treeless plain ending in sheer cliffs that drop into the Southern Ocean to the horizon.
The road runs straight for 146 kilometres without a single bend. The treeless plain โ Nullarbor means 'no trees' โ extends in every direction to horizons that have nothing on them. Then it ends. Sheer cliffs drop into the Southern Ocean with no warning, no barrier, and no one watching.
The Nullarbor Plain stretches approximately 1,200 kilometres across the border of South Australia and Western Australia, the world's largest single piece of limestone. The Eyre Highway crosses it in the longest straightest road in Australia โ 146.6 kilometres without a curve. Roadhouses are spaced 200 kilometres apart, each one a fuel-and-food lifeline. The plain ends at the Bunda Cliffs, where the limestone drops 60-120 metres vertically into the Southern Ocean โ southern right whales are visible below from May to October. The landscape's defining feature is absence: no trees, no hills, no rivers, no towns. Beneath the surface, the Nullarbor's cave systems are among the longest in Australia.
Solo
The longest straight road in Australia, whale-watching from clifftops with no one around, and a silence that lasts for days โ the Nullarbor tests and rewards solo drivers.
Friends
Convoy across the treeless plain, stop at every roadhouse, and stand together at the Bunda Cliffs where the land simply ends โ the Nullarbor is a group pilgrimage.
Roadhouse pies and coffee at Nullarbor Roadhouse โ the only structure for hundreds of kilometres in any direction.
Camp cooking at the Bunda Cliffs lookout โ eat dinner as southern right whales breach 80 metres below.

Barreal
Argentina
A dried lakebed so flat and white it doubles as a land-sailing course beneath the Andes.

Chapada dos Veadeiros
Brazil
Crystal quartzite pools and rare wildflowers blazing across billion-year-old rock in the cerrado.

Campo Imperatore
Italy
A vast high plateau called Italy's Little Tibet, barren, wind-scoured, impossibly empty.

Rum
Scotland
A volcanic island where a millionaire's Edwardian castle still houses a hydraulic orchestrion playing to nobody.

West MacDonnell Ranges
Australia
Ochre-walled gorges cut through the desert, each one hiding a permanent waterhole of shocking cold.

Walls of Jerusalem
Australia
An alpine plateau of pencil pines and glacial tarns named by trappers who found paradise.

Mitchell Falls
Australia
Four tiers of waterfalls crashing into plunge pools accessible only by helicopter or days of 4WD.

Karijini National Park
Australia
Swim through gorges of banded iron two billion years old, their walls striped like geological barcodes.